Belgrade Noir Read online

  She snapped out of it and cleared her throat. “May I . . . hear its . . . voice?” she asked.

  “Of course.” The director’s face lit up and again he typed something on the tablet. “Tell us your name.”

  The creature before them looked at him for the first time and responded calmly: “Marija. Marija Vranješ.”

  She couldn’t detect any difference in tone or inflection. It was creepy.

  “Please . . . let it get dressed again.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  After her double got dressed and sat down again following the director’s instructions he entered into the tablet, Marija asked: “So, how are we going to do this?”

  He nervously smiled and nodded to the device he held in his hand. “We have already entered the bulk of the instructions, including your usual schedule—going to yoga, pilates, massage and cosmetic treatments . . .”

  “And suntanning. Suntanning is essential—I travel where there is a lot of sun; I’ll be tan, at least on my face, neck, and shoulders, I mustn’t forget that.”

  “Yes, yes, certainly, you’ve already mentioned this to us. You have scheduled the appointments already, right? No worries, Marija 2.0 will not miss a single one.”

  “I have to ask you—I read a little about . . . singularity. It seems to me that no one has figured out whether it’s possible if—”

  “If artificial intelligence becomes real? Equal to a human’s?” He spread his arms and shrugged. “I think we are very, very far from it. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about that.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “It’s never happened before, and we’ve experimented a lot. Marija 2.0 will perfectly fulfill her role: she will live for you in your home, while you are where you really want to be. No one will notice the difference. When I turn on the autonomous mode, your specific wave front will enter the scene—what makes you unique—and she will react to every situation as you would. Did you bring things for her?”

  Marija lifted a large paper bag containing her purse, wallet, makeup, car and house keys, clothes, socks, shoes, bracelet, necklace, and wristwatch—identical to those she had on her. The director took the bag from her, approached the chair with the silent Marija 2.0, and lowered her to the floor.

  “Nevertheless . . .”

  “Yes?” Marija asked.

  “In order to be completely safe—in the event that something unforeseen happens—we will also program a safe word. Say something that you would remember in an instant, so it can serve as a kind of switch . . .”

  “Mombasa,” she said without thinking. It was the name of a luxurious perfume, the first gift she’d received from Isak. The perfume that she had not stopped using since then.

  “Mombasa! Excellent.” The director typed the word on the tablet with pleasure. “Let’s try it?”

  He swiped his fingers across the touch screen, and Marija 2.0 stood up, turned to her, looked her straight in the eyes, and stepped forward.

  Marija felt a sudden shudder along her spine and gave him a look. The director nodded.

  “Mombasa!” she exclaimed.

  Marija 2.0 immediately stopped.

  “Perfect,” he said, and the duplicate, after the newly typed instructions, returned to her place. “We still need to agree on the logistics. Do you want her to go back to your apartment right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suggest putting her into autopilot mode when she gets in your car. And when you return . . .”

  “You programmed her to come back here in fifteen days at this exact time?”

  “Of course. It’s easiest that way. However, if for some reason her independent return is not possible, it may be best to replace her at your place. You have the safe word, so you can invite me to come, and I will arrange for her to be returned to the lab.”

  Marija looked at her calm face on the woman who stood nearly a foot from her. “Then what will happen to her?” she asked.

  “We’ll put her back,” he said indifferently.

  “Into her previous state?”

  “Yes. We will dissolve her into proteins, water, minerals, everything that makes a human organism.”

  Marija gulped. “And what about the . . . software?”

  He looked a little surprised. “You mean what will happen to the scanned person who is now in our server? Mr. Lero ordered that we delete this information as soon as this fifteen-day trial is over. Except, of course, if you want to preserve it for some future opportunity.”

  “All right,” Marija said. “I’ll tell you when I’ve made a decision about that. This is all too new and strange for me.”

  “And for us too, Mrs. Vranješ,” the director said. “For us too.”

  As Marija entered the elevator, her perfect copy slowly took out clothes from the bag and started to get dressed.

  * * *

  What is your name?

  Marija. Marija Vranješ.

  She frowned, leaning on the sink as the phantom words passed through her head again. She washed her cup and ashtray and lay both on the drying rack.

  She couldn’t explain the feeling of duplication that had followed her the past few days. It was there while she was driving to work, letting the autonomous system operate the vehicle through the central city streets. It was there while she worked in the office surrounded by colleagues she had known for more than ten years. It was there while she presented a concept for the next museum exhibition to her boss who always only half listened to her proposals and usually accepted them without objections. There was this feeling of duplication while she was spending time with her friends, during beauty treatments, at the hairdresser’s, yoga classes, in tanning booths . . . For some reason she couldn’t understand this artificial tanning in the least bit—she had never, as far as she recalled, resorted to that dangerous method of tanning.

  It was as if she were in her own body and somewhere else, where she watched herself behave naturally, easily, spontaneously, in all these everyday situations. The situation at home wasn’t helping, either.

  When did she and Aleksandar actually start drinking coffee separately, in separate rooms, in their own worlds? She was reluctant to think about it in more detail: she would always stop herself as if sitting in front of a closed door that she didn’t want to open out of fear of what was behind it. She saw him at home in the evenings, when he returned from work and continued to program until late into the night. She was reserved with him because she felt she should behave this way, not because she could remember the right reason. She looked at the apartment and the things they owned as though she was seeing them for the first time, even though she knew when they had bought most of the things—decorations, paintings, or pieces of clothing and furniture—together or on their own. And the mirrors were another story: every time she looked at her reflection in her bedroom, bathroom, hallway, even in the corner of a windowpane, it was as if a shadow was present at the very edge, her shadow where it couldn’t possibly be. Soon, she began to avoid mirrors altogether and used them only when she absolutely needed to.

  Then one night she opened the lower drawer in her bureau in the bedroom—a bedroom with a queen bed that she slept in by herself—and pulled out a box.

  It was made of wood, decorated with abstract patterns, lacquered, rather heavy. She set it close to her feet. She felt an irresistible desire to open it; she also felt fear. She stood there indecisively for a long time, aware that the sense of division—duplication—would continue to bite at her more and more mercilessly, all the more insatiable if she didn’t do anything about it.

  She lifted the lid.

  Mina.

  She closed her eyes and felt dizzy, thinking that she’d lose her balance.

  The door opened. And behind it was a wave that swept across her whole being, filled up all the voids she had felt, uncovered everything buried deep under the mud of nonsense.

  Mina.

  A pink rabbit with a ripped left ear, where t
he old yellowish filling was spilling out. Zeka-Peka, funny bunny, the one she slept with, the one who still smelled like her, Mina the baby. A green woolen vest that Marija’s mother knitted when Mina was six months old and a pair of socks of the same color, from the same wool. Photographs—from the hospital, after childbirth; also from the hospital, four years later. A lock of hair in a decorative ring with a label and a date. She remembered when she’d cut off that lock—Mina was almost two years old and just getting used to sleeping without a pacifier.

  Eighteen months later, Mina had no hair. And she got used to sleeping with a plastic tube in her esophagus.

  The pain was enormous, unbearable. Marija thought at one point that she wouldn’t be able to breathe again. The pain was gray, tough, and impenetrable, the pain was a wall that grew from tragedy, from the meaningless death, for them the greatest tragedy in the world. The wall grew, forcing her and her husband, the parents who had done nothing wrong—their child had been genetically cursed—dividing them forever and bringing silence to them heavier than any cry, sharper than any scream.

  As she lowered the cover of the box it seemed to her that the duplication was real—the one that she felt in the shadows of the mirror—stronger than ever before, like Warhol’s pictures of runners on skates with discordant colors and contours. She rose and moved away from the box. She placed a fist in her mouth to swallow up the mute scream that leaped from her stomach: she’d realized that it had been years since she’d visited Mina’s grave. That she had found a solution to pretend that all of this had never happened. That she had cut her ties, as much as she could, with her own parents, with her father-in-law who lived outside the city and whom she hadn’t seen even once since the funeral.

  With Aleksandar.

  She found him in his study in front of an open laptop.

  She approached him silently, walking barefoot on the thick carpet, so that he didn’t have the chance to close the computer screen, to not let her see the photo of a skinny child with a bare scalp covered with blue veins, with big chestnut eyes and an absurdly happy smile, with a beloved pink bunny pressed against her cheek.

  When he felt her presence behind him, he quickly reached his hand toward the laptop, as if he was ashamed of looking at that photograph himself, but his hand halted in the air halfway and loosely dropped. When he turned his face toward her, she saw that it was covered with tears. Just like hers.

  Without a word, he embraced her and pressed his head into her waist. When his shoulders stopped shaking, she lowered her hand to his forehead, and gently touched him.

  How much time has passed since our last embrace? she wondered. How long since we last made love?

  She took him by the hand and pulled him slightly toward her. For a moment it seemed that he’d resist, refuse, and return to the solitude of the photograph to which he had condemned himself, but no—he got up, accepted the grip of her hand, and followed her.

  When the orgasm came, he seemed at once like a good old friend and someone completely new. And Warhol’s contours and colors seemed as if they had finally merged, made a complete, coherent image.

  Now, after so much silence, it was time to talk.

  “It all started with the three-dimensional printing of transplant organs,” Aleksandar said. She was silent, pressing her body against his.

  “Top-level bioengineering. Saving lives. Help for people sentenced to death from kidney, liver, pancreas failure . . . Technology is evolving so fast and the results are here. And now this—the quantum leap forward, artificial intelligence and bio reconstruction merging—is fascinating and frightening. Do you know why?”

  She shook her head, embracing him tightly.

  “Because now we can—without any obstacles—save someone who is close to us, someone we love, as we save images or sounds, to create it again if we lose it, if . . .” He went silent. It was too hard for him to continue.

  She took a sharp breath and whispered, “All you’ve been doing for years—everything you’ve put into the codes and programs . . . it was all because of her? Because of our little girl?”

  For several moments he tried unsuccessfully to find his voice, and then managed to utter without tears, clearly, slowly, quietly, “Yes. But too late. Too late for her. For us.”

  She was silent for a while, playing with the hairs on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “You know,” she finally said, “we could try again.”

  He held his breath and turned toward her, looked her in the eye. “Again?”

  She leaned on her elbow. Their faces were only an inch apart. “Yes. With a new child. A new baby. It’s not too late.” She smiled briefly, nervously, as he observed her.

  “Where did that come from?”

  She shrugged. “I think that’s what we need if we want to stay together at all.”

  “Would you be willing to go through everything again, everything we went through with Mina?”

  She sighed. “It’s different now. Of course, our genetics are the same, and there’s still the risk. But things have changed. You changed them.”

  Aleksandar rubbed his eyes and straightened himself against the pillow. He now had a glint in his eyes that she had not seen for years. “Yes . . . Now it would certainly be different. Lero deserves recognition for this—even though he only wants money, he’s done something revolutionary, something that will change the game from the get-go. Something that’ll make humankind redefine itself.”

  She barely heard his last sentence. She felt as if he had punched her in her stomach. The name he’d uttered suddenly opened a new door, a door she hadn’t even known existed.

  Lero. Isak. Her husband’s employer. A polite and attentive lover. The man she’d been seeing for three years.

  Učiteljsko Naselje.

  Let’s call her . . . Marija 2.0.

  I read a little about singularity. It seems to me that no one has figured out whether it’s possible if . . .

  I think we are very, very far from it.

  The stream of words. Conversation fragments. Someone heard it, some just reproduced it from her own/others’ memory.

  We’ll put her back . . . We will dissolve her into proteins, water, minerals, everything that makes a human organism.

  Mombasa.

  Was it just a moment or an eternity? She wasn’t sure how long this blinding white light lasted after the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. She became aware that Aleksandar was squeezing her hands hard, that he was trying to get her attention—to bring her back to reality—his face distorted from care and fear.

  “Marija! Marija, what’s going on with you? You turned so pale, like you saw a ghost! Say something! Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?”

  Her eyes regained focus. He saw that she really saw him again and the spasm was passing, though despite her tan she was still white as a ghost. He relaxed the grip on her hands and gently lowered her back to the bed.

  “Are you okay?” Aleksandar repeated.

  She answered him with a smile that looked more like another spasm as she licked her dry lips. She cleared her throat and peered deeply into his warm, worried eyes. “I have to . . . I need to tell you something.”

  * * *

  She felt like she was walking on clouds.

  She had just spent the most beautiful and happiest fifteen days of her life. The future looked bright and perfect.

  They had enjoyed each other, absorbed the scents and tastes of Spain and Portugal, visited museums, indulged in culinary delights, enjoyed the luxury of expensive hotels, and made love—often, relaxed, free of sorrow and guilt. Then, two days before their return, while having a dinner in Nice, Isak told her that he was ready if she wanted to do it.

  Marija was enthusiastic. She didn’t say anything to anyone. She only messaged Tamara, hinting that she had great news. When they headed back, Isak flew to Frankfurt for a three-day artificial intelligence conference, and she returned on a direct flight to Belgrade to a new, completely altered reality.<
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  As she drove home from the airport, her telephone rang. When she answered, she saw on the small screen the little rat face of that tiny man in the white coat—the director.

  “Mrs. Vranješ?”

  “Yes?”

  “There have been . . . ah . . . some changes.”

  “What changes? I don’t understand.”

  The director avoided looking her in the eye. “Marija 2.0 didn’t return to the location. We assume there has been some kind of coding error.”

  She felt a sudden rage, accompanied by fear. “And now what? Where is she?”

  The little man shrugged. “We are not sure. We think she’s in the apartment. In your apartment. The GPS signal from the mobile device that you left for her indicates that she is there. But, of course, she could have left the phone and gone out without it.”

  Marija tried to calm down. Where was Aleksandar now? The day before yesterday, Isak had told her offhandedly, as if it were something irrelevant, Aleksandar had asked for—and received—several days off work so he could go visit his sick father. This worked in her favor—he wouldn’t be home when she faced her replacement.

  “What are you suggesting?” she asked coldly, and saw from the expression on the director’s face that his whole career was at risk.

  “Hmm . . .” He coughed. “I . . . I hired an ambulance that belongs to a clinic that is part of Mr. Lero’s holdings. The vehicle will wait with the team discreetly in the side street near your building. If you find Marija 2.0 in the apartment, use the safe word and let me know. The team will get her here right away.”

  “And if it’s not there?”

  He shrugged again, an apologetic expression on his face. “We’ll wait till she’s back. And in the meantime, we’ll try to locate her some other way.”

  Marija hung up without saying goodbye.

  Ten minutes later, she unlocked the front door with a spare set of keys, entered the apartment, and put her suitcase down. It was getting dark outside, and the only light in the apartment came from the spacious living room. She paused at the door, looked inside, and saw the floor lamp turned on. And there, on the sofa, was a human form.